


Walls of Fog

by aqd



Series: Halloween Countdown 2017 [4]
Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spirits, Angst, Character Death, Ghosts, Grief/Mourning, Halloween, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-09-29
Packaged: 2019-01-06 21:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12219102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aqd/pseuds/aqd
Summary: Dead doesn't mean gone.





	Walls of Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Part number 4 of my halloween countdown.
> 
> trigger warnings: death, accidents, blood, injuries.

When Alma thinks about his life and the moments, which shaped him the most, quite a few come to his mind.  
  
The day his parents died and he ended up in foster care.  
  
The first time he was passed along, because he was an untameable wild child.  
  
The day he balanced together with his foster brother on a wall, lost his balance and cut his face on a broken tile on the ground.  
  
The second time he was passed along, because his foster mother got pregnant and there was apparently no more room for him in the family.  
  
The several times some kids in school ganged up on him, because of the scar on his face, his worn-out clothes, how easily he gets angry.  
  
The third time he was passed along, because he was just too much for his foster mother, who tried so hard.  
  
The day he lost control and attacked his foster father after months of mistreatment.  
  
The day he arrived in the facility for adolescents with behavioural problems.  
  
And, of course, most important, the day he met Yuu in said facility.  
  
They were sixteen and Alma has been fascinated at first sight. It hasn’t been only due to the fact that Yuu’s handsome and way too pretty for his own good, but also his unfathomable dark eyes. Alma has never met somebody, who’s even remotely as hard to read as Yuu. He’s been great at hiding behind scowls and frowns even then. And of course behind rage, his oldest companion, just like Alma.  
  
They have been very different. Both incredibly angry, but while Alma has lost control on a regular basis, Yuu has always been a little more calculating. Together they have thrown the facility into turmoil, each of them in their own ways. Alma with tossed glasses and chairs and Yuu with waiting for an opportunity to steal the staff’s keys.  
  
Alma had soon a crush on him, while Yuu wanted none of that. But somehow he has wiggled through a crack in his barricade and they had become friends. They still have beaten the shit out of each other at least once per month, but soon they were inseparable.  
  
Their first kiss has been on Alma’s eighteenth birthday, on the quiet in the pantry, between shelves full of jars. It has been weird and a little uncomfortable, because of Yuu’s tight grip of his shoulders, but at the same time so warm. So incredibly warm. Alma’s whole body has felt hot and tingly and so alive. In the end it has been Yuu, who stepped back and ended the kiss, because Alma couldn’t get enough of it.  
  
Somehow they got on the straight and narrow and even though both of them still have their problems, they live their so much calmer lives. They only have minimum wage jobs, because they never managed to graduate in the chaos in their youth, being lost and scared and at the same time so excruciatingly angry, and their small apartment is in a very bad neighbourhood, but they power through it.  
  
Together.  
  
Until Alma dies.  
  
The day he loses his life starts like a normal day. He wakes up and Yuu lies next to him and his hair is all over the place. Alma smiles and sneaks up to him to steal a kiss, but Yuu wakes up like always and pinches his cheek.  
  
“What are you doing?” he asks drowsily and Alma laughs.  
  
“Waking up my sleeping beauty,” he teases and Yuu grimaces.  
  
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he asks with a frown but he doesn’t fend off his kiss. He wraps an arm around him and pulls him close. Alma nudges their feet together and smiles against his lips.  
  
“How did you sleep?” he asks and Yuu blinks tiredly. He twists his hand into Alma’s dark hair and stretches his legs.  
  
“Kinda okay, and you? You moved so much last night.” He examines him and Alma looks into his dark eyes and feels so secure.  
  
“Yeah? I don’t remember,” he answers and they’re silent for a moment, until Yuu moves closer and kisses him and Alma closes his eyes.  
  
It’s slow and soft like always and sometimes Alma wonders how somebody like Yuu can be so gentle. His anger is still there and takes over whenever he reaches his limit, but behind that there is another side of him, with tender hands and soft dark eyes, and Alma is the only one, who’s allowed to see it. This knowledge sometimes makes his throat tight and his eyes teary, because he’s so happy and feels so much at home like never before in his life.  
  
Yuu is over him and Alma arches his back with a soft gasp. His nails leave behind crescent-shaped imprints on Yuu’s back and blooms of red appear under his mouth on Alma’s neck.  
  
“Yuu,” he whispers and cups his flushed cheek.  
  
“Alma,” he whispers back, even more silent, and it’s a beautiful moment. Only the two of them, in a room full of pale morning light.  
  
Afterwards Alma has to hurry, because he’s late as always and the goodbye kiss is short and a little impatient and both of them have no idea that this is their last kiss.  
  
“Bye!” Alma beams at him over his shoulder and Yuu doesn’t return his smile, but he leans in the door and his dark eyes are soft.  
  
“Bye,” he says and then he closes the door and Alma runs down the stairs and hurries to work.  
  
He walks for the last time to the metro station close by and past run-down houses and closed stores and the sun feels warm on his skin. He thinks about the movie they could watch in the evening and in the end it’s just a loose stone. He shoots a look at his watch and starts to run, because he can’t miss the metro or he’s going to get a bollocking from his boss. His feet fly over the pavement and towards the flight of steps to the station. A single leave wafts by and a soft breeze moves his hair.  
  
And Alma trips.  
  
He has barely time to be startled and then he falls, headfirst and down the stairs. He tries to catch himself and turns, but he has no chance. The back of his head hits the edge of a stair and the collision goes through his entire body and he tumbles down the rest of the stairs and stops on his back. Pain sloshes over him and his limbs feel numb. The last thing Alma sees is a piece of bright blue sky and the last thing he hears is the shocked scream of a young woman he passed beforehand.  
  
And the world gets dark.

 

But only for a while.  
  
Alma falls and falls and falls, in endless blackness, until he catches a glimpse of something light out of the corner of his eye. He tries to reach out, but his hands are gone. Everything is gone and he feels light and heavy at the same time, molten and frozen, ripped apart and pressed back together. It’s terrible and he screams voicelessly. The darkness threatens to smother him, until he’s suddenly blinded. Alma hides his face behind his hands, which are back out of nowhere, and then he doesn’t fall anymore.  
  
He curls up in a ball and it’s so bright and loud and dark and silent and his whole body is trembling. He has never been this terrified before in his life and he feels like he’s losing his mind.  
  
Then he hears something. Somebody. Yuu.  
  
Alma clings to his voice and the chaos around him dies down. He’s in a room full of milky fog and Yuu’s voice sounds so far away and faint and Alma stumbles blindly forwards.  
  
“Yuu!” His voice sounds familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. The fog lies heavily on his skin, it’s hard to breathe and he feels dizzy. “Yuu!” His voice cracks and he stops. He’s disorientated and the volume of Yuu’s voice doesn’t change, no matter how much Alma runs. He’s hyperventilating and his hands are ice cold. “Yuu!”  
  
“I- I don’t understand.” Alma’s head snaps around and there he is. Yuu is barely visible, hidden behind thick fog.  
  
“Yuu!” Alma stumbles towards him and stops dead only a moment later.  
  
It’s his Yuu, but at the same time it’s not. The fog moves a little and reveals his face, ghostly pale. His eyes are wide and his face stone-still. Alma steps closer, but Yuu doesn’t notice him. He talks to somebody, who’s still hidden in the fog.  
  
“I- I don’t understand.”  
  
The person he’s talking to answers, but their voice sounds like white noise to Alma and it’s deafening. He presses his hands over his ears, but the sound still pierces through his body.  
  
“No,” Yuu says and shakes his head vehemently. “No, that’s- no. He can’t- he can’t-” His voice dies down and looks right through Alma in way he has never seen before.  
  
“Yuu,” he whispers and steps closer. “Yuu.”  
  
Yuu still doesn’t look at him and for a moment anguish flows over his face, raw and desperate, and Alma bursts into tears, because he doesn’t know what’s happening and Yuu is suffering. His hands move over his cheeks, his trembling lips, his shoulders.  
  
“Can I see him?” Yuu asks silently, voice thin, and doesn’t look at Alma, even though he’s right in front of him and cries. He doesn’t comfort Alma like he usually does.  
  
Fog wafts around him and for a moment he loses Yuu and panic threatens to drown him, but it’s only a moment. Then he’s back and Alma throws his arms around him and hides his face in the crook of his neck. His whole body is tense and stiff and he clenches his fists so much he’s shaking.  
  
“Yuu?” Alma draws back and startles, because Yuu’s eyes are full of dread. Alma turns his head to see the reason and loses the ground under his feet, immediately.  
  
It’s him. He lies on a metal bier, even paler than Yuu and with closed eyes and a face full of bruises. Alma’s feet move on their own. He stands over himself and the same dread he saw in Yuu’s eyes rushes over him. He raises a hand and wants to reach out, but then he feels something wet dribbling down his neck. He touches the back of his head and his hand is crimson red. Blood runs over his back, soaks through his shirt, pools around his feet.  
  
Alma screams, hands helplessly jumping over the back of his head, and his voice echoes from the blank walls of the morgue.  
  
And suddenly Yuu stands right next to him and lays his hand on the forehead of the body in front of them.  
  
“Yuu,” Alma croaks and touches his shoulder. His bloody hands don’t stain his light shirt.  
  
Yuu’s eyes are squeezed shut and misery threatens to spill out of him, but then he withdraws into himself and it’s a sight Alma has seen so often before, always when he’s hurt. His face hardens and his eyes get dull.  
  
Walls of fog collapse over their heads and Alma falls back into darkness. He doesn’t fight this time, instead he curls up and floats in a numb dark sea, eyes squeezed shut.

 

It’s once more Yuu’s voice that guides him back and the darkness spits him out. It’s still foggy, but Alma recognises their apartment immediately. He looks around and takes a few unsure steps until he hears him.  
  
The fog thins out and he sees Yuu, finally. He lies on the bed, on his side and curled around Alma’s pillow, and dread pools around him on the worn out sheets. His whole body is shaking.  
  
Alma lies down next to him and his hand dances over his shoulder. Yuu’s dark eyes are reddened, his cheeks blotchy and his breath shuddering.  
  
It’s the first time Alma sees him cry and there’s nothing he can do, besides from crying with him.

 

He loses track of time. Darkness and fog devour and spit him out repeatedly. Sometimes it’s day, sometimes it’s night.  
  
Yuu doesn’t eat, shower and sleep and barely drinks. His dark eyes are puffy and empty and Alma can’t bear the sight, but he still stays right next to him.

 

The funeral is small and only a few people come. Yuu sits alone in the first row of the tiny cemetery church and doesn’t talk to anyone. A few colleagues of Alma offer their sympathy, but he casts his eyes down and doesn’t reply.  
  
Alma sits next to him and holds his ice cold hand.

 

Rage, Yuu’s oldest companion, takes over after the funeral and Alma watches helplessly Yuu thrashing their apartment. His movements are angular and wrath oozes out of his eyes.  
  
He rips apart bed linen, kicks down furniture and throws glasses. He doesn’t scream, instead he stays terrifyingly silent.  
  
Afterwards he just collapses and lies in the ruins of their apartment, their home. Alma crouches down next to him and his eyes well over. Yuu curls up in a ball and there’s no other word to describe him than _defeated_. Thoroughly defeated. And all alone in a destroyed apartment.  
  
Alma twists his body around him and together they cry.

 

Alma can’t be dead. He can’t. He’s young and healthy and he only wanted to go to work. He can’t be dead. He can’t.  
  
He’s in love and after all these years in foster care he has somebody, who gives him the feeling to be at home and he _can’t_ be dead.  
  
And still Yuu’s pained eyes go right through him and no matter how much he screams, cries and begs, Yuu can’t hear him.

 

Soon a weird light appears. It’s warm and soft and Alma feels drawn to it like a moth in a moonless night. The light is calming and reassuringly and he wants nothing more than to fall right into it, but then he looks back at Yuu, who’s in broad daylight in the dark. Alma sits down next to him and the light dies down.

 

Yuu cleans up their apartment and short time later he moves. Alma watches him packing everything together, including his own belongings. Yuu carefully puts everything Alma has ever owned in boxes and tapes them shut. His eyes and the line of his mouth are hard, but his hands won’t stop shaking.  
  
His new apartment is smaller and the bed is made for one, not two. Alma’s boxes end up in his wardrobe.

 

Yuu goes back to work, because he has to. He’s as obnoxious and intolerable as Alma has never seen him before, not even in his worst times, and talks to nobody more than he has to. He spends his breaks alone.

 

He looks worse and worse. The shadows under his eyes get darker, his face paler and his eyes harder. He barely sleeps and Alma lies next to him and caresses his hair-line with his fingertips, because he knows how much he likes that and sometimes, sometimes his eyelids grow heavy and he gets lulled to sleep by affection he doesn’t feel.

 

Alma follows him nearly everywhere and the darkness takes him less and less often. Sometimes days pass, before he falls once more into the dark fog.  
  
He slowly starts to accept that he’s in fact dead. That he died because of a loose stone.  
  
It’s incredibly unfair and one day they pass a young couple, both men, both Asian, and hurt, deep and desperate, darts over Yuu’s face, barely hidden behind caginess, and Alma loses control for the first time in years.  
  
He screams and screams and screams, he tears his hair, he rams his nails hard enough into his palms to break skin.  
  
And earth just keeps rotating, the both young men are still happy and in love and Yuu keeps cooling down with every step and has to grit his teeth to keep misery from gushing out.

 

Alma starts to talk to him, about everyone and everything. He talks a mile a minute and the words just fly past Yuu without reaching him.  
  
Alma still keeps talking.

 

One day Yuu, overfatigued and a wreck, doesn’t look before crossing a street and he also doesn’t see the car.  
  
But Alma does. Adrenaline shoots through his body and he probably screams and stumbles forwards. His hands close around Yuu’s upper arms and he yanks him back. Yuu loses his balance and lands on his side, while the car misses him by the skin of his teeth.  
  
“You fucking idiot!” Alma snaps and crouches down next to him. Yuu sits up and looks around in confusion. The streets are deserted, not a single body to be seen. He gets up and brushes dirt from his clothes, still with a deep frown on his face and finally it dawns on Alma. He falters and then he reaches out. He grabs Yuu’s hand like he has done so often before, alive and dead, and gives it a gentle tug, but he doesn’t budge. He starts to walk and Alma follows him deep in thought.

 

He might be dead, but that doesn’t mean that he’s gone. Yuu, his Yuu, is going to live a long life.  
  
Alma is going to ensure it, love blooming in his chest even in death.

 

After a while, Alma doesn’t know how long since he lost track of time, Yuu falls asleep easier. It gets easier to get up and go to work. His eyes are still hard and he still doesn’t even look at the boxes with Alma’s belongings, but it’s a start.  
  
One day he walks to work, Alma as always by his side, and a young man with a smartphone in his hand walks hard enough into a streetlamp that he loses his balance and lands on his bottom.  
  
And Yuu snorts. It’s barely hearable and the humour vanishes as fast from his face at it has appeared, but Alma is delighted.

 

It’s one of Yuu’s bad days and he spends the whole day in bed. Alma lies his arm around him and hopes so much that at least a little of his warmth can reach him.

 

They have never told each other the three words, not once. Both of them have just known and it has been fine like this.  
  
Alma says the words for the first time on a rainy day. Yuu’s usual metro station is closed for repair work and with a curse he starts to run to the closest one. He’s already half down the stairs, when he freezes.  
  
Alma stands next to him and it makes his skin crawl. Even though he knows it’s a mistake, he tilts his head back and stares at the same piece of sky, which is burnt into the folds of his brain. The last thing he has ever seen in his life.  
  
Yuu sits down on one of the stairs and misses his metro. His dark eyes are set on run-down and cracked tiles and Alma lays an arm around his shoulders. Together they stare at the place Alma has died so short and at the same time endlessly long ago.  
  
Alma looks into his strained face and the words leave his mouth on their own. “Yuu, I love you.” He rubs his back and his voice gets tight, because he finally said it after thinking it for years and Yuu can’t hear him. “I love you so much.”  
  
Yuu closes his dark eyes, before he tilts his head back and examines the cloudy sky. Drops of rain land on his face, but they aren’t the only wetness on his cheeks. He wipes his face with the back of his hand and gets up to walk home, shoulders sloped and steps heavy.

 

Sometimes Yuu dreams of him. Alma doesn’t know how he knows, he just does. Yuu’s face gets a little softer in his sleep, but only to get hard as soon as he wakes up in a bed made for one, not two. He stares at the ceiling and Alma’s fingers brush over his cheeks in the desperate try make him feel better, at least a little. But Yuu doesn’t feel better.  
  
And for the first time he speaks to him. It’s only one word and it’s silent, barely audible and full of anguish.  
  
“Alma.”  
  
“I’m here,” he whispers and his voice and the movement of his hands are frantic. “Yuu, I’m here.”  
  
Yuu squeezes his eyes shut and turns over onto his side, away from him.

 

Yuu moves again, this time farer away. He resigns and gets a new job in another branch. He gets a new haircut, very short and surprisingly flattering, and throws all his clothes away and buys new ones. The only thing he keeps is a wide shirt he has barely ever worn and still complained every time Alma snitched it. He folds it carefully and lays it in the bottom drawer of his new dresser. He takes Alma’s belongings with him and places them under his new bed and in his new wardrobe. Aside from that the boxes stay untouched.

 

The dreams are less frequent and his sleep less restless. Alma lies next to him and watches his calm face, while his fingers can’t stop playing with the short hair on the back of his head.

 

One day Yuu goes out, even though he has always hated bars. Maybe it’s a try to escape the silence of his tiny apartment. He doesn’t drink much and doesn’t notice the green eye watching him, but Alma does. A redhead with a kind mouth and an eyepatch, which barely distracts from the glint in his good eye. Yuu keeps drinking and avoiding any conversation and finally the redhead moves closer.  
  
“Hey,” he says with a soft voice and Yuu cuts him a look, like he does with everyone, but it doesn’t scare him off. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asks and for a moment they just examine each other. Yuu’s eyes don’t move, until the redhead cracks a charming smile. He licks his lips and Yuu’s eyes drop and stay on his mouth. And finally he nods.  
  
It’s an one night stand, quick and rough, and Alma doesn’t follow them into the redhead’s - Lavi’s - apartment. He sits on the topmost stair in the dark staircase and hugs his legs, enshrouded in muffled moans and gasps. Yuu leaves the apartment after barely half an hour and his short hair and his clothes are in disarray. Alma gets up and together they walk through the night.  
  
Yuu’s steps are a little more at ease and his face looks satiated after a long time without any physical contact, but not for long. Soon guilt oozes out of his dark eyes and Alma’s hands move over his shoulders.  
  
“It’s fine.” He says it again and again, on the way home, lying next to him in bed and in the morning after a sleepless night. “You were lonely. It’s fine, Yuu, it’s fine.”  
  
Yuu doesn’t go out again.

 

They run into each other in the supermarket. As soon as Yuu sees Lavi, he wants to turn around and flee into the next isle, but he has already seen him.  
  
“Hey, how’s it going?” he smiles at him in the same way he did in the bar and Alma notices the shiver wandering over Yuu’s back.  
  
“Fine,” Yuu answers through gritted teeth and nothing is fine. He’s lonely, Alma senses it, and his days consist of going to work, sitting in an empty tiny apartment and lying awake at night.  
  
Lavi grins at him and leans close enough that his lips brush Yuu’s ear. “Wanna go home with me?”  
  
The fine hairs on Yuu’s arms rise and he shakes his head. “I have to go to work.”  
  
“Okay, then another day,” Lavi answers without skipping a beat. “Gimme your phone, I’m gonna give you my number.” Yuu reluctantly does and then he goes home.

 

Yuu wants to call him. Alma knows it, but he also knows that Yuu is a stubborn bastard. Days pass by and finally he does it. They hook up a few times more, always in Lavi’s apartment and Yuu always leaves immediately and always he feels guilty afterwards. Alma always whispers into his ear that it’s fine. And Yuu always calls him again after a few bad days.

 

Lavi manages to do the same Alma did so long ago: he crawls through a crack in Yuu’s barricade. They start to go out together and finally one night they kiss in front of Lavi’s door and it’s soft and gentle and Yuu’s steps are so light when he goes home.  
  
Yuu slowly falls in love and Alma is so happy for him and still can’t stop crying, because Yuu, his Yuu, slowly becomes Lavi’s Yuu.

 

Fog and darkness take him more often. He lies curled up in a ball, cradled by darkness and the light appears once more, but all he can think about is the day Yuu was nearly hit by a car and so he emerges from the nothingness and returns to his home, hidden behind dark eyes and anger.

 

Sometimes he follows Lavi and gets him to know. They’re quite similar. Talkative, a little too loud, much more affectionate than Yuu, whose fondness barely ever reaches his words and is only visible in the darkness of his eyes, when they’re completely alone.  
  
The biggest difference between them is that Lavi is so much calmer. He never loses control, he doesn’t scream and he’s so level-headed. He does Yuu so good and finally Alma doesn’t cry anymore. His Yuu slowly starts to thaw and that’s the most important.

 

One day Lavi makes the huge mistake and slips on the wide shirt from the bottom drawer, because he’s cold and Yuu didn’t do his laundry. Yuu, and with him Alma, comes home from the store and falters.  
  
“Take that off.” The words are cutting and for a moment grief threatens to spill out of his eyes, but his oldest companion rage awakens with a roar and takes over. Lavi looks at him in honest surprise and bewilderment. “Take that off.” Yuu’s voice gets louder and louder and Alma lays his hands on his shoulders.  
  
“Yuu, he can’t know. Calm down, please.”  
  
Lavi does what he is told and examines Yuu very carefully and so calm. Alma and Yuu would have screamed at each other by now, only to make up passionately later. But Lavi doesn’t scream and he doesn’t get angry and that in turn calms down Yuu. They start to talk and somehow Lavi manages to get Yuu to open a little door in his barricade. Alma’s fascinated and sits cross-legged on the floor and watches.  
  
In the end they sit next to each other on Yuu’s bed and for the first time Yuu talks about him. To hear his own name out of Yuu’s mouth lets a shiver erupt between Alma’s shoulder blades. It wanders over his whole body, from head to toe, and he feels so warm, because there’s love in Yuu’s voice, behind all the pain and grief.  
  
“His… his name was Alma,” Yuu says silently and embraces the shirt, antsy fingers curling into the fabric. Lavi doesn’t say anything and just listens, so does Alma. “He was my…” He falls silent and his dark eyes roam restlessly through the room, searching for a word to describe what has been and still is between them. “He always took my shirt.”  
  
“What happened?” Lavi asks softly and the way he looks at Yuu makes Alma so happy. Yuu, his Yuu, is loved.  
  
“He went to work one morning and fell down a flight of stairs and just… he just…” A single drop lands on the shirt and disappears between stitches. Yuu looks up to Lavi and his eyes spill over. “He just died,” he croaks and then he cries against Lavi’s shoulder and both of them, Alma and Lavi, cry with him. Lavi holds him and rubs his back, while Alma curls his hand around Yuu’s.  
  
Yuu doesn’t need long to regain his composure and finally he opens one of the boxes under his bed and all three of them look at photos, mostly of Alma, because Yuu is the most camera-shy person he has ever met, but there’s one with the two of them. Alma looks happy and so alive and Yuu healthier and less pale. Lavi is in awe, mostly because of Yuu’s hair and probably because of the glint in his dark eyes, and together they hang up the photo.  
  
“You know, I think the persons we love never leave for good,” Lavi says and intertwines his fingers with Yuu, whose eyes are on the photo.  
  
He slowly shakes his head. “Gone is gone.”  
  
And Alma stands right behind him and looks over his shoulder with a sigh, because he’s _so_ wrong.

 

Alma has an eye on both of them and in the end it’s Lavi, who needs his help.  
  
Yuu lies lazily on the couch while Lavi prepares noodles. He takes the hot pot with boiling water in his hands and wants to walk to the sink, but his naked feet slip and he loses his balance. He has barely time to scream and Alma lunges forwards and somehow manages to slap the pot away from him. Lavi lands on the floor and boiling water everywhere but on him.  
  
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Alma whispers and leans with one hand against the cabinet. Lavi lies on the floor, his eye wide and mouth agape. “You have to be more careful,” Alma scolds him, even if he can’t hear him. Lavi looks right through him and falters. Alma frowns and steps aside. As soon as he takes his hand away he sees it.  
  
A handprint on the fogged cabinet door.  
  
“Lavi?” Yuu peeks into the kitchen and throws open the door as soon as he sees him on the floor. “Did you scald yourself?”  
  
Lavi blinks and looks at him, before he inspects his arms and legs, but he’s unharmed. “I- No, I don’t think so.” He looks again at the cabinet, but condensed water has started to run down and the handprint is gone. “I don’t know how, but I didn’t get any water on me.”  
  
Yuu helps him up, after examining him, and together they clean up. Lavi keeps looking at the cabinet, but doesn’t say anything.

 

Time flies by and Yuu’s hair gets long enough to tie it up. He’s at ease and so much calmer than before and sometimes Alma wonders, if Yuu starts to forget him. But then he stops in front of the photo on the wall and affection swirls warmly in his dark eyes and Alma knows that he’s everything but forgotten.

 

He wants both of them to live a long and happy life and looks after them and for some time it’s just like that. Calm, in love and happy. But life is unfair and ruthless and Alma tries so hard.  
  
In the end he fails.

 

They’re in the car they just bought after months of saving up, Yuu on the driver’s, Lavi on the passenger and Alma on the back seat. He leans forward and laughs, because Lavi keeps teasing Yuu, who just looks so long-suffering and everything is so nice and light-hearted, until a ghost driver appears out of nowhere.  
  
Alma is the first one to see it, but Lavi starts to scream only a second later. Yuu tries to dodge the other car, but they have no chance. Alma manages to throw himself between Yuu and the windscreen by the skin of his teeth and curls his body around him. The collision is terrible and Alma can’t prevent Yuu’s head from clashing against the side window. It’s chaotic and Alma’s heart throbs against his ribcage. Finally the car stops and for a moment it’s very silent, until a soft tone escapes Yuu’s lips. Alma examines him and his breath hitches. Yuu is bleeding heavily from his head, just like Alma so short and long ago. He’s unconscious and Alma’s hands helplessly dance over his head, desperately trying to staunch the bleeding. He turns his head in the hope that Lavi can help him, but he’s in no shape to help.  
  
He can barely see him. Lavi is stuck in a mess of metal and when Alma reaches out blood runs over his hand. Alma looks back at Yuu and presses his hands on the bleeding wound in the knowledge that he’s probably the only reason Yuu is not as stuck as Lavi, whose life is gushing out of him.  
  
“Everything is going to be alright,” he whispers and it’s a good thing that nobody can hear him, because the tears in his eyes prove him a liar.

 

Help comes soon. Yuu is still unconscious when they take him away and Alma runs after them, while a group of firemen start to cut Lavi free.  
  
He crouches in the ambulance right next to Yuu and his lips brush his ear. “Everything is going to be alright.” He keeps saying it, again and again. Then Yuu flatlines all of a sudden and for a moment something threatens to rush out of him. It has no body and no voice, but Alma feels the fear and he knows what it is. His flat hands lands on it and push it back and his scream is piercing. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare to die!” The screen flickers and they shock him and after a long moment his heart starts to beat.  
  
Alma leans against the wall of the ambulance and tears of relief run over his face. “You’re not going to die,” he says and wipes his face. “Yuu, you’re not going to die.”  
  
Finally they reach the hospital and it’s the same one Alma ended up in so long ago, on a metal bier in the morgue. He grabs Yuu’s hand and doesn’t let go. Not while they work on him, not while he flatlines once more, not in the operating room.  
  
He keeps their finger intertwined, until a strong gush of wind hits him and nearly knocks him off his feet. He hesitates, before he lays a hand on Yuu’s forehead and whispers into his ear, “I’ll be right back. You’re doing so good.”  
  
Normally he would never leave him alone, but he has a terrible feeling. He flies through the closed door and sprints through the corridor and finally he sees it. A red shock of hair.  
  
They try their best to help Lavi. They try to staunch his bleedings, they try to resuscitate him, but his injuries are too severe. Something flies past Alma and a wave of fear hits him. He tries to catch it, but it flies right through his fingers and so he takes up the chase.  
  
“Lavi!” he shouts, but his voice gets drown out by a scream, full of mortal fear and panic. Alma lunges forwards and throws his arms around a bodiless body and together they fall through darkness. “Lavi!” he shouts. “Lavi, everything is going to be alright!” Blinding light and suffocating darkness take turns and all of a sudden two hands curl into his shoulders. “Lavi!”  
  
They stop falling in the blink of an eye and red hair touches Alma’s cheek. “Lavi?” he whispers and finally he raises his head. Green eyes, two of them, examine Alma in consternation.  
  
“Alma?” Lavi croaks and understands immediately. “No.” He stumbles back and stares at him. “No.” Denial seeps out of his eyes, followed by panic. “No!”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Alma whispers. “Lavi, I’m so sorry.”  
  
“This can’t be real.”  
  
And then the same happens like so short and long ago with Alma. This time not in a morgue, but in the emergency room. Fog is everywhere, dense and heavy, and the only thing visible is the red of hair and blood. Lavi stares at his own body, destroyed and hardly familiar, and starts to scream, green eyes wide.  
  
Alma lays a hand on his back and then Lavi cries against his shoulder.

 

They sit next to each other on the floor of the operating room and watch how the doctors try to save Yuu’s life. He has internal bleedings, but the biggest problem is his head. Both of them are horrified, when they open his skull to staunch the brain haemorrhage, but they still don’t leave.

 

“That was you in the kitchen, right?” Lavi asks and it’s the first thing he says since a while. He examines Alma, who nods and smiles sadly at him.  
  
“I had an eye on Yuu and then on both of you.” His eyes well over and he wipes his face with the back of his hand. “I wanted you to live a long life with each other.”  
  
“So you’re not angry? Because of me?” Lavi asks and looks so incredibly exhausted like Alma has felt so long ago in their little apartment right next to Yuu, who couldn’t stop crying.  
  
Alma shakes his head. “I want him to be happy. You made him happy.” He can’t stop the sob. “Thank you.”  
  
Lavi’s eyes redden and they embrace each other.

 

The light appears. Alma can’t see it, only the reflection in Lavi’s green eyes. He takes his hand and presses his fingers.  
  
“You can go, if you want to. I’ll stay here and look after him,” he offers, but Lavi closes his eyes and when he opens them the light is gone. He shakes his head and looks back at Yuu, who’s still on the operating table and fights for his life.

 

The doctors try everything, but it doesn’t look good. Alma and Lavi hold his hands and whisper encouraging words into his ears, but the damage is done. They watch how the doctors test Yuu’s reflexes and examine the pattern of his EEG. There are no hills and valleys, only a very even line with hardly any waves.  
  
“What does that mean?” Alma asks and Lavi takes a deep breath, but in the end it’s one of the doctors, who answers his question.  
  
“Is he an organ donor?”

 

The decision to let Yuu go comes in form of a neatly folded piece of paper in his wallet. The doctors bow to his wishes and Alma screams and cries, because Yuu, his Yuu, is going to die. Lavi stays silent, but his eyes won’t stop spilling over.

 

They stay the whole time with him. They hold his hands, talk to him, try to make the crossover a little easier, but it’s as pained and terrifying as for both of them. They chase after him and try to guide him and in the end it’s Lavi, who manages to catch him.  
  
Yuu is as scared as they were, but he’s surprisingly silent. He doesn’t scream, instead he rams his nails deep into Lavi’s shoulders, holding tight like a drowning man, eyes wide and face strained. Fog wafts around them, a raging storm, and Alma doesn’t dare to step closer.  
  
“Yuu,” Lavi says softly and pulls him close. “Yuu.”  
  
“Lavi.” Yuu’s breath is irregular and broken-winded and his dark eyes jump over his face. “What…?”  
  
“Yuu.” Lavi takes his face in his hands and tries to smile. “Yuu, we’re dead. We died.”  
  
Yuu stares at him for an endless moment and finally the fog parts, unveiling a body. Head shaved, face swollen and bruised, skin deathly pale. Hardly recognizable.  
  
All tension leaves Yuu’s body and Lavi has to hold him up. “No,” he whispers, staring at all that is left of him on the other side, half hidden behind a sea of fog, milky walls collapsing over their heads and sticking to their skin. “We can’t…”  
  
“We are.” Lavi holds him and for a while they just stand like this. Still in a white storm. Yuu’s eyes are squeezed shut and his breath won’t calm down. Lavi holds him and presses his lips together to keeps the tears away. Then his eyes fall on Alma. “Yuu,” he says very softly and a tiny smile crawls on his face. “He was there, the whole time.”  
  
Yuu doesn’t understand and looks at him, before he follows his eyes. And finally he looks at Alma and his eyes don’t go through him.  
  
“Hello Yuu,” Alma tries to say, but he’s crying so hard that he can barely talk.  
  
Yuu stares at him, eyes wide, mouth agape. “Alma,” he croaks after moments, which feel like an eternity. Lavi steps back and Yuu stumbles towards him. “Alma!”  
  
They fall into each other’s arms and Alma is deliriously happy and devastated at the same time, because he has finally Yuu, his Yuu, back, but only because of twisted metal and cerebral death. Alma holds him as tightly as he can, terrified to lose him once more and to be banished again. All alone on the other side of an unscalable wall. Only able to watch for days, weeks, months, years. Both of them cry and then Yuu draws back, but only a little and only to look into Alma’s eyes, before pressing his lips on his. The kiss tastes like tears, grief and finally - finally! - satisfied longing.  
  
“I was there,” Alma sobs into his hair. “I was there and you couldn’t see or hear me. Yuu, I was there, the whole time.”  
  
“I missed you so much.” Yuu takes his face in his hands and his dark eyes are so full of pain and happiness and love and anguish. “You went to work and you just never came home.”  
  
Alma wants to answer, maybe apologize, but the words won’t come out and so they just embrace each other, hands trembling and breaths shuddered.  
  
They regain slowly their composure and both of them look up, when a suppressed sob resonates. Lavi leans against a wall and tries so hard not to cry. He wipes his face with his sleeve, but the tears won’t stop running down.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I would leave, but I don’t know how.” He squeezes his eyes shut and Alma startles.  
  
“No!” He flies towards him and throws his arms around him. “No, don’t go.”  
  
“Lavi.” Yuu steps closer and takes his hand. “Lavi, I…”  
  
“We were only together, because he died,” he says, voice thin. “I don’t belong here.”  
  
“Yes, you do.” Alma stares at him and firmly grabs his shoulders. “Yeah, maybe you wouldn’t have been together if I wouldn’t have died, but that doesn’t mean it’s less worth. You belong here. You made him happy, when I couldn’t do it and I’m so grateful.”  
  
Lavi looks at him, before slowly turning towards Yuu. “Yuu?” he whispers.  
  
“I love you. And I love Alma. I…” He falls silent, because it’s overwhelming and scary and beautiful at the same time, but he doesn’t let go of his hand. He and Alma lock eyes for a moment and Alma takes his other hand. All three of them don’t talk and just stand next to each other, reunited after days and years.  
  
“So, I can stay?” Lavi asks cautiously and they nod, immediately. And so he smiles softly and a little incredulously, relief running down his cheeks.  
  
They stay like this for a while, steady in the heavy sea of fog and darkness and finally Yuu finds his voice. “What now?” he asks silently and Alma laughs a little overwrought.  
  
“I have no idea,” he admits and Lavi laughs too, mostly out of the same reason like Alma.  
  
“Does… something happen?” Yuu asks and examines him with a soft frown and Alma smiles a little awkwardly at him.  
  
“I don’t know. I spent the whole time with you and aside from occasional darkness nothing ever happened,” he explains slowly and looks at both of them. “I… I was just there.”  
  
“I saw a light and it was so… so inviting, but it disappeared when I decided to stay for some more,” Lavi says and presses Alma’s hand. “You saw it too, right?”  
  
“Twice,” he answers and the mere memory causes warmth to spread out around his heart. “Did you see the light, Yuu?”  
  
He frowns. “I… I saw light, but it wasn’t inviting. It was cold and so blinding… right after I...” he falls silent and casts his eyes down, deep in thought.  
  
“Right after you died?” Lavi helps and he nods. “Yeah, that’s not it. That was fucking terrifying.”  
  
“So, I guess we just wait, until it comes back?” Alma offers and both of them nod.  
  
“And until that happens?” Yuu examines him and his face relaxes, because Alma starts to smile.  
  
“We’re just here,” he answers and Lavi moves slightly next to him.  
  
“Can we go everywhere we want?” he asks and there’s something in his eyes that makes both of them step closer.  
  
“Where do you wanna go?” Yuu let’s go of his hand, but only to tuck a red strand of hair behind his ear.  
  
“Home.” His voice is silent and Alma wants to answer, but an imagine wafts over him. Soft green hills, an endless blue sky, the smell of rain, the sound of the ocean.  
  
Alma darts a look at Yuu and knows that he just saw the same thing. “Then let’s go,” he says and together they leave the hospital, death and blood behind, steps so much lighter than before.  
  
Together.

**Author's Note:**

> See you next week with part #5: "A Lilin's Heart". It's an incubus au and the ship is lucky.  
> Have a nice week!


End file.
